Erdoğan tells media not to cover Kurdish conflict

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey
is known to lash out publicly at journalists of whose coverage he disapproves. He
has called on media owners and editors to discipline reporters and columnists critical
of his policies, particularly when it comes to the sensitive Kurdish issue. In
more than a few cases, to avoid trouble, newsroom managers have listened and
dismissed the staffers in question.

But Erdoğan's most recent televised "message
to all the media" crosses from reprimanding into directly instructing journalists
to stop covering the long-standing conflict between the Turkish Armed Forces
and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). This is unthinkable.

At a live TV debate on August 31, the prime
minister told journalists: "This [news about the conflict] must be ignored;
there is no other way." He proceeded to claim that U.S., French, and British
media do not cover military action in Afghanistan. (This, of course, is untrue.
A simple Google news search of the keywords "coalition forces in Afghanistan"
returns 21,000 hits.)

Erdoğan brought up the recent kidnapping
by the PKK of an opposition member of parliament, who was released two days
later in southeastern Turkey. The prime minister said he believed the
kidnapping had been staged and, by covering the incident, Turkish media served
as a propaganda platform for the PKK. "I really expect the media [to act] as
one hand, one heart," Erdoğan said. "I want to come to an understanding with
you on this subject. This is a message to all the media. There are soldiers of
all the coalition forces in Afghanistan. There were 158 losses in the last
month, I received the numbers today. However, you cannot see this in either a
British newspaper or in a French one. However, when it is us, print media covers
it all.

"What are they [Turkish media] doing?" the
prime minister said. "The most important target of terrorism is propaganda.
[Terrorism] gets it done for free here. On whose side will the media be?"

Propaganda of terrorism is an umbrella term in
Turkey, where the legal system provides authorities with ample opportunity to
prosecute and imprison journalists, publishers, academics, activists, and
demonstrators on the vaguely defined charge. Dozens of journalists are in
prison in Turkey for their work, the vast majority of them on PKK and
terrorism-related charges.

The prime minister has publicly claimed a
commitment to freedom of the press and freedom of expression as pillars of a
democratic society, including in last week's exclusive interview
with CNN journalist and CPJ board member Christiane Amanpour. But when he
equates media coverage with abetting terrorism, he sends a message to Turkey's
judiciary and prosecutors to keep going after members of the press who cover
the sensitive Kurdish story.

In his August 31 statements, Erdoğan specifically
told the media to stop reporting on fallen Turkish soldiers, who are officially
recognized as "martyrs" by the Turkish state. When a journalist pointed out
that readers demand coverage of the issue, the prime minister was
straightforward: "Here, I believe that covering it even in small ways should be
put aside. It should not be covered at all."

It's of little surprise, then, that
pro-Kurdish local television station Gün TV is banned from broadcasting its
evening news programs for a week starting tomorrow. The program's hosts were
also banned from appearing on air--not only on Gün TV but on any station--for the
same period. An astronomy documentary series will be aired instead of news,
local reports said. The ban was ordered by the High Board of Radio and
Television (RTÜK)--the state media regulator--on a complaint made by Mustafa
Toprak, the governor of Diyarbakir province, on request of local police. The
complaint said that Gün TV was involved in terrorist propaganda by
praising the PKK and its leaders, according to the local press.

Meanwhile, the
trial of more than 40 Kurdish journalists, charged with supporting
terrorism, continued for a third consecutive day in Istanbul today. The
accusations stem from media coverage of PKK activities.

Özgür Öğret is a Turkish freelance journalist and CPJ’s Turkey representative. He was lead researcher for the 2012 CPJ special report, "Turkey's Press Freedom Crisis."

4 comments

completely false and bigotted information. Erdogan never said "don't cover kurdish conflict" to the media. He said "don't show dead bodies of terrorist or exhibit their training camps into propaganda.

He is right, because some of the Turkish media is very eager to carry relentless PKK propaganda, just for some ratings. Or maybe for some other reason.

This means that the whole world now is witnessing that Turkey's chief executive states, and even in a live television debate program with four editors of the country's main media, that he alone will decide what the media should and must write. This is outrageous. Thank You so much for this blog!
I now know that Erdogan is backed into a corner

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